Job satisfaction and organizational commitment of hotel managers in Turkey

The aim of this paper is to identify the effects of job satisfaction on organizational commitment for managers in large‐scale hotels in the Aegean region of Turkey and, in addition, to examine whether there is a significant relationship between the characteristics of the sample, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction.

Two structured questionnaires were administered to large‐scale hotel managers in the tourism industry. The survey instruments were adopted from the validated Minnesota Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment Questionnaire of Meyer‐Allen. The data were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 13.0.

The findings indicate that extrinsic, intrinsic, and general job satisfaction have a significant effect on normative commitment and affective commitment. In addition, the findings suggest that the dimensions of job satisfaction do not have a significant effect on continuance commitment among the managers of large‐scale hotels. When the characteristics of the sample are regarded, age, income level, and education have a significant relationship with extrinsic job satisfaction whereas income level indirectly affect affective commitment.

Participants are limited to the managers of large‐scale hotels in Aegean region of Turkey so the results could not be generalized to the whole country; however, the number of respondents is assumed to be sufficient to provide comprehensive results.

Although job satisfaction is found to affect organizational commitment, practitioners should not disregard the fact that there is an interactive relationship between the two factors; otherwise, the organizations might be at risk. In addition, the governmental support is very important in minimizing the effects of seasonality problem in tourism.

The previous research studies in Turkey generally have focused on the organizational commitment and job satisfaction correlation among the employees in different sectors of Turkey but usually within one organization. Upper level managers' views and the tourism sector have sometimes been neglected. This research was conducted to address this deficit in Turkey in terms of reaching various hotels in a region, trying to measure the viewpoints of the upper level managers, and conducting the research in a labor‐intensive sector such as tourism.